Julian had a snow tyre.
Richard has two wheel drive with snow chains on car tyres.
Jethro had a knobbly with chains lashed to it.
Simon used chains lashed around his wheel (trail tyre) with luggage strapping, he did a really good job getting to the top (and back down) on his solo without any drama.
Gareth and I had a bit of project fever by the time we came to sort out our chains and he made two sets using ideas gleaned from various websites. Mine lasted well at the beginning of the climb, but then I lost a tensioning bolt. After that it was a combination of short stints between stopping for repairs and the maddest tow of all time. During the course of this short tow a chain section came loose and acted as a flail... hence the shattered number plate in Richard's picture of me being towed. I managed a few more stints on my chains until they finally gave up the ghost and the fella you see in the picture towed me the last 1/2k to the site.
The pictures give no indication of the steepness of the climb and Gareth and Simon did very well indeed to get as far as they did (Simon made it, Gareth got very close).
Hats off to Julian and Jethro though, they just rode up.
Our two mistakes were:
Not fitting heavily-treaded tyres
Not listening to the organiser's advice on how hard it was to make your own chains.
Having said all that, we had a great time despite our troubles and (thankfully for our egos) we certainly weren't the only ones being towed up.
Skill or technology? I'd have to say that it's down to your kit. I know how capable my brother is off-road and it was the chains that let him down, not any lack of riding skill. Having said that, I ended up (due to a moronic mistake on my part) having a fast ride up the hill on the back of Richard's outift and he displayed a massive amount of skill.
As for the descent, it wasn't as scary as we had convinced ourselves that it was going to be. Smooth road tyres offered minimal grip for steering and stopping, but with a combination of pulsing the brakes and using the snow bank as a brake we made it down just fine. In fact we should have come down a lot faster, but Gareth had fitted chains to the front wheel and these played up so he wasn't prepared to let the bike run as fast as he could have.
All in all it was an adventure.
Jethro flew home today from Frankfurt so he can now add the experience of his first plane flight to the trip.
GC
